Practical CO2 monitoring in anaesthesia

Abstract

The special value of airway CO2 monitoring is its potential to alert the clinician about a range of critical complications of anaesthesia. As a detector of several of these complications, it is both sensitive and rapidly responsive - but not specific and therefore not diagnostic by itself. Accordingly, the findings of airway CO2 monitoring (like those of all other monitoring systems)must always be interpreted in the context of clinical observation of the patient and other pertinent information. © 1993 Canadian Anesthesiologists.